For the next few days there will be a Twitterbomb at 21:00 UTC / 9pm GMT for 1 hour.

The idea is to get #EUecigban to the #1 spot in the trending list (the list is on the left side of your Twitter profile). We have been told that EU officials, MEPs, journalists and others monitor EU-related hashtags and we want to get a large EU-wide volume of tweets out there about the amazingly corrupt legislative process that clearly bends over backwards to protect major industries at the potential cost in this case of millions of lives. The EU Parliament voted against medicalisation of ecigs, now officials are trying to effect exactly the same thing by use of a tobacco product classification with ultra-strict regulations that are a de facto ban.

Please:
1. Send as many tweets as you can
2. Include messages about EU corruption, influence of the pharmaceutical industry, the undemocratic process, how the EU will be responsible for millions of preventable deaths, why they are doing this to protect pharma, they are protecting cigarette sales, etc.
3. Use these hashtags: #EUecigban #ecigs #EU

If you don't use Twitter then get an account and start now. Let's make sure journalists know about this issue. Here's how:

1. Go to https://twitter.com
2. Register, choose a username; your name and username will be displayed in each of your tweets so make sure you get it right first time - see one from Gerry Stimson in pic below

3. The username is mainly so people can reply to you easily and search your past tweets
4. Put something in your profile. If you are only going to tweet on this issue then put something like: Ecig user living in the EU gulag
5. Twitter may not have much relevance to your daily life - but for community advocacy it is a really useful tool, and if you haven't used it before then now is the time
6. Here's a typical message for this purpose - you can just copy and paste this into the text box if you like, though it's better if you create your own; keep the tags at the end the same, though:

Just to follow on from Roly's comprehensive overview - it's hard to overemphasise how important Twitter has been in generating support within Europe on fighting the EU's attempts to outlaw vaping. We've gained support from politicians, scientists and opinion makers that would have been difficult to get in any other medium.

I've used twitter for general interest for some time, and thought its main utility was as a sort of social aggregator for interest-specific links. I was wrong - it's much more than that.

One of the main reasons this Twittbomb is so important is that we know officials in the EU are monitoring twitter hashtags relating to the EU to guage sentiment. Hence, it's very important that the hashtags #EUecigban #ecigs #EU are used in these tweets.

The EU are trying to bring in an ecig ban by backdoor methods even though a ban was defeated in the EU Parliament. The entire process is totally corrupt and is driven by financial motives not public health. We need to stop the EU's ecig ban, and their officials, journalists and many others monitor messages with certain hashtags (tags that start with a # symbol).

So if you send a message like, "Stop the undemocratic EU ecig ban. #EUecigban #EU #ecigs"
...then it will add to the volume of messages sent between 9pm and 10pm UTC (GMT) and they will top the trending lists and be seen by many. For example, journalists see this traffic and comment on it.